A Corpus-based Study Of Verb Errors By Chinese EFL Majors In C-E Translation

As far as the teachers and the learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) inChina are concerned, the studies of the learners’ linguistic errors in their applyingEnglish are of significance to both sides. For the teachers, with better knowledge ofsuch errors made by the learners, they will be in a better position to make consciousefforts to improve their teaching performance, and for the learners, when betterinformed regarding such errors, they will do better in applying English, reducing theoccurrences of them. Besides, for the researchers in the relevant subject, theirachievements will provide new scholarly knowledge of those errors, and by analyzingthe underlying causes of those errors, they may propose more efficient pedagogicalstrategies for EFL teaching and learning. The verb of English is one of its mostimportant parts of speech. To a large extent, the Chinese EFL learners’ performance intranslation of Chinese into English (hereafter short for “C-E translation”) can representtheir proficiency in applying English for practical purposes. As shown by a survey ofthe relevant literature, up to now, there have been few studies reported on studies ofEnglish verb errors by Chinese EFL majors in their C-E translations, though suchstudies are necessary and significant. The present project attempts to study such errors.With regard to the object of study here, its basic scope covers the English verberrors made by Chinese EFL majors in their C-E translation practices, and more relevantare those errors by them in their TEM-8C-E translation tests. The English verb errors ofsuch a category, which are retrieved from Corpus of EFL Majors (CEM) built byShanghai International Studies University in2008, constitute the key object of thepresent study. By both library and empirical methods, the study aims to answer thefollowing research questions: On the basis of the data from CEM, what English errorsare made by Chinese EFL majors in their TEM-8C-E translation tests? What are thedominant types and characteristics of those errors? Besides, the study analyzes thepossible causes of those errors and thereby proposes some suggestions for the teachingand learning of English in general and of C-E translation in particular. In the study, by means of Wordsmith5.0, all the data marked in CEM as verberrors by Chinese EFL majors in their C-E translation practices of TEM-8in2004,2005and2006are retrieved and analyzed. The major findings include: in the C-E translationsin TEM-8for senior Chinese EFL majors, transitive and intransitive verb errors accountfor the largest proportion of all the verb errors, followed by verb errors in the use of setphrases and then non-finite verb errors. Thus, we can regard those three kinds of verbsas the most difficult points for Chinese EFL learners in the process of C-E translationwith regard to their use of the English verbs. The possible causes of such verb errorsmade by Chinese EFL majors are mainly concerned with three aspects: the inter-lingual,intra-lingual, and other causes. Based on these research results, some pedagogicalsuggestions concerning EFL and C-E translation teaching and learning are made, theirkey points being: the bilingual contrastive approach should be given more efficient playto in teaching and learning; further development of the advanced EFL learners’ ability toapply both Chinese and English in practice should be more emphasized; the C-Etranslation learners should pay more attention to monitoring their English output on thebasis of their expression of the original content.